Tamil Nadu halts disease bulletin, public health journal

The Tamil Nadu health department has stopped issuing its monthly bulletin on diseases and a medical journal, saying that the media misquoted the data and misrepresented facts, The Times of India reported.

Director of Public Health Dr A Somasundaram told the newspaper that the bulletin compiled data on the number of cases tested positive for a disease, and “have to be compared with the total number tested” and seasonal changes.

“Many times, stories published in the media don’t represent the actual situation,” Somasundaram was quoted as saying.

Public health experts have criticised the decision saying that the bulletins were a public source of information on state-level health data and was used by researchers and journalists to analyse emerging disease patterns.

The Tamil Nadu Journal of Public Health and Medical Research was published quarterly by the Directorate of Public Health and Preventive Medicine. It contained information about the impact of state government schemes, epidemiological studies and disease patterns.

The journal’s 18th issue, covering July 2025 to September 2025, was published in May 2026, The Hindu reported.

The bulletins contained health data, including vital indicators such as maternal and infant mortality rates, The Times of India reported. However, the module for the bulletin has now been removed from the directorate’s website. The last bulletin, covering February 2026, was published in early April.

The bulletin would continue to be published after certain corrections and design changes, The Hindu quoted unidentified officials as saying.

On the journal’s publication, they were quoted as saying that the exercise had only been delayed.

The decision was also criticised by the Opposition in the state.

Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson Narayanan Thirupathy on Friday said that the state government’s decision “is a serious failure of public accountability and a direct blow” to transparent public health governance.

When the media misquotes or reports lack context for raw case numbers, “the proper response is immediate correction – clarifying positivity rates, seasonal baselines, testing volumes and trends”, Thirupathy said on social media.

He said that the “correct administrative action is to improve how data is presented and to publicly correct errors, not to withdraw” it.

“By simply stopping the publications because of alleged misreporting, the government has chosen the easiest escape from scrutiny instead of fulfilling its duty to inform the public accurately,” he added.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.